The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter

by Michael D. Watkins

Negotiating success means proactively engaging with your new boss to shape the game so that you have a fighting chance of achieving desired goals.

The resources you need will depend on the situations you’re dealing with. In start-up situations, your most urgent needs are likely to be adequate financial resources, technical support, and people with the right expertise. In turnaround situations, you need authority, backed by political support, to make the tough decisions and secure scarce financial and human resources. In accelerated-growth situations, you need the investment necessary to support growth, as well as support for putting in place needed systems and structures. In realignment situations, you need consistent, public backing to get the organization to confront the need for change. Ideally, your boss will stand shoulder to shoulder with you, helping pierce through denial and complacency. In sustaining-success situations, you require financial and technical resources to sustain the core business and exploit promising new opportunities. You also need periodic pushes to set stretch goals that will keep you from drifting into complacency.

You may have to remind your boss periodically to focus on the results you’re achieving and not on your methods.

Don’t restrict your focus to hard skills. The higher you rise, the more important the key soft skills of cultural and political diagnosis, negotiation, coalition building, and conflict management will become.

NEGOTIATE SUCCESS—CHECKLIST How effectively have you built relationships with new bosses in the past? What have you done well? Where do you need improvement? Create a plan for the situational conversation. Based on what you know now, what issues will you raise with your boss in this conversation? What do you want to say up front? In what order do you want to raise issues? Create a plan for the expectations conversation. How will you figure out what your new boss expects you to do? Create a plan for the style conversation. How will you figure out how best to work with your boss? What mode of communication does he prefer? How often should you interact? How much detail should you provide? What types of issues should you consult with him about before deciding? Create a plan for the resource conversation. Given what you need to do, what resources are absolutely needed? With fewer resources, what would you have to forgo? If you had more resources, what would the benefits be? Be sure to build the business case. Create a plan for the personal development conversation. What are your strengths, and where do you need improvement? What kinds of assignments or projects might help you develop skills you need? How might you use the five conversations framework to accelerate the development of your team? Where are you in terms of having the key conversations with each of your direct reports?

The goal of the first wave of change is to secure early wins. The new leader tailors early initiatives to build personal credibility, establish key relationships, and identify and harvest low-hanging fruit—the highest-potential opportunities for short-term improvements in organizational performance. Done well, this strategy helps the new leader build momentum and deepen his own learning. The second wave of change typically addresses more fundamental issues of strategy, structure, systems, and skills to reshape the organization; deeper gains in organizational performance are achieved. But you will not get there if you don’t secure early wins in the first wave.

The straightforward plan-then-implement approach to change works well when you’re sure you have the following key supporting planks in place: Awareness. A critical mass of people is aware of the need for change. Diagnosis. You know what needs to be changed and why. Vision. You have a compelling vision and a solid strategy. Plan. You have the expertise to put together a detailed plan. Support. You have sufficiently powerful alliances to support implementation.

In a turnaround, you face a combination of time pressure and the need to rapidly identify and secure the defensible core of the business. Often, techniques such as bringing in new people from the outside and setting up project teams to pursue specific performance-improvement initiatives are a good fit. Contrast this with realignments, where you are well advised to start with less obvious approaches to behavior change. By changing performance measures and starting benchmarking, for example, you set the stage for collectively creating a vision for realigning the business.

Given your agreed-to business goals, what do you need to do during your transition to create momentum for achieving them? How do people need to behave differently to achieve these goals? Describe as vividly as you can the behaviors you need to encourage and those you need to discourage. How do you plan to connect yourself to your new organization? Who are your key audiences, and what messages would you like to convey to them? What are the best modes of engagement? What are the most promising focal points to get some early improvements in performance and start the process of behavior change? What projects do you need to launch, and who will lead them? What predictable surprises could take you off track?

The “systems” part highlights the fact that organizational architectures consist of distinct, interacting elements: strategic direction, structure, core processes, and skill bases.

Strategic direction. The organization’s mission, vision, and strategy Structure. How people are organized in units and how their work is coordinated, measured, and incentivized Core processes. The systems used to add value through the processing of information and materials Skill bases. The capabilities of key groups of people in the organization Of course you need to have the right strategic direction to move forward effectively. But misalignments involving any of the other elements can make even the best strategy useless. Strategic direction drives the other elements and is influenced by them: if you decide to change your group’s direction, you will probably have to alter its structure, processes, and skills to create a fully aligned architecture.

In a turnaround, the right approach often is to alter the strategy (which typically is not adequate), then to bring the structure into alignment with it, and then to focus on supporting processes and skills. In a realignment, however, strategic direction and structure often are not the real source of the difficulties. Instead, they frequently lie in the processes and skill bases of the organization, and these are the places to focus on. Close the loop. As you learn more about your group’s structure, processes, and skills,

One caution: much of an organization’s power gets allocated via its structure, because it defines who has the authority to do what. So take care not to take on structural change unless it is obvious that it’s needed—for example, in turnaround or rapid-growth scenarios. Tackling structural change early on can be particularly perilous in realignments, where there isn’t a burning platform to drive the change process.

Hierarchical reporting relationships make these tasks easier but can lead to compartmentalization and poor information sharing. Complex reporting arrangements, such as matrix structures, broaden information sharing and reduce compartmentalization but can diffuse accountability.

ACHIEVE ALIGNMENT—CHECKLIST What are your observations about misalignments among strategic direction, structure, processes, and skills? How will you dig deeper to confirm or refine your impressions? What decisions about customers, capital, capabilities, and commitments do you need to make? How and when will you make these decisions? What is your current assessment of the coherence of the organization’s strategic direction? Of its adequacy? What are your current thoughts about changing direction? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the organization’s structure? What potential structural changes are you thinking about? What are the core processes in your organization? How well are they performing? What are your priorities for process improvement? What skill gaps and underutilized resources have you identified? What are your priorities for strengthening key skill bases?

Assuming you avoid these traps, what do you need to do to build your team? Start by rigorously assessing the people you inherited, and then plan to evolve the team into what you need it to be. In parallel with this, work to align the team with your strategic direction and early-win priorities, and put in place the performance-management and decision-making processes you need to lead effectively.

Consider these six criteria: Competence. Does this person have the technical competence and experience to do the job effectively? Judgment. Does this person exercise good judgment, especially under pressure or when faced with making sacrifices for the greater good? Energy. Does this team member bring the right kind of energy to the job, or is she burned out or disengaged? Focus. Is this person capable of setting priorities and sticking to them, or prone to riding off in all directions? Relationships. Does this individual get along with others on the team and support collective decision making, or is he difficult to work with? Trust. Can you trust this person to keep her word and follow through on commitments?

Create an interview template. Ask people the same set of questions, and see how their answers vary. Here are sample questions. – What are the strengths and weaknesses of our existing strategy? – What are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing us in the short term? In the medium term? – What resources could we leverage more effectively? – How could we improve the way the team works together? – If you were in my position, what would your priorities be?

FIGURE 7-2 Using push and pull tools to motivate people

The relative sizes of individual and group-based performance compensation depend on the extent of interdependence of contributions. If superior performance comes from the sum of independent efforts, then individual performance should be rewarded (for example, in a sales group). If group cooperation and integration are critical, then group-based incentives should get more weight (for example, in a new-product development team). Note that there may be several levels of group-based incentives: team, unit, and company as a whole.

consult-and-decide often works well. The problems tend to be technical (markets, products, technologies) rather than cultural and political. Also, people may be hungry for “strong” leadership, which often is associated with a consult-and-decide style. To be effective in realignment and sustaining-success situations, in contrast, leaders often need to deal with strong, intact teams and confront cultural and political issues. These sorts of issues are typically best addressed with the build-consensus approach.

To succeed in your new role, you will need the support of people over whom you have no direct authority. You may have little or no relationship capital at the outset, especially if you’re onboarding into a new organization. So you will need to invest energy in building new networks. Start early. Discipline yourself to invest in building up “relationship bank accounts” with people you anticipate needing to work with later. Think hard about whether there are people you haven’t met who are likely to be critical to your success.

As you learn more, try to identify the sources of power that give particular people influence in the organization. Here are examples: Expertise Control of information Connections to others Access to resources, such as budgets and rewards Personal loyalty

As you frame your arguments, keep in mind Aristotle’s rhetorical categories of logos, ethos, and pathos.5 Logos is about making logical arguments—using data, facts, and reasoned rationales to build your case for change. Ethos is about elevating the principles that should be applied (such as fairness) and the values that must be upheld (such as a culture of teamwork) in making decisions. Pathos is about making powerful emotional connections with your audience—for example, putting forth an inspiring vision of what cooperation could accomplish.

Choice-shaping is about influencing how people perceive their alternatives. Think hard about how to make it hard to say no. Sometimes choices are best posed broadly, at other times more narrowly.

Getting people involved in shared diagnosis of organizational problems is a form of incrementalism: involvement in the diagnosis makes it difficult for people to deny the need for tough decisions. Once there is agreement on the problem, you can shift to defining the options and then the criteria that will be used to evaluate them. By the end of such a process, people are often willing to accept outcomes they would never have accepted at the outset.

Understanding the Three Pillars of Self-Management If you have these sorts of weaknesses, what can you do about it? You must vigorously engage in self-management, a personal practice that is built on a foundation with three pillars. The first pillar is adoption of the success strategies presented in the previous eight chapters. The second pillar is creation and enforcement of some personal disciplines. The third pillar is formation of support systems, at work and at home, that help you maintain your balance.

Assessment of core challenges Core challenge Diagnostic questions Prepare yourself. Are you adopting the right mind-set for your new job and letting go of the past? Accelerate your learning. Are you figuring out what you need to learn, whom to learn it from, and how to speed up the learning process? Match your strategy to the situation. Are you diagnosing the type of transition you face and the implications for what to do and what not to do? Negotiate success. Are you building your relationship with your new boss, managing expectations, and marshaling the resources you need? Secure early wins. Are you focusing on the vital priorities that will advance your long-term goals and build your short-term momentum? Achieve alignment. Are you identifying and fixing frustrating misalignments of strategy, structure, systems, and skills? Build your team. Are you assessing, restructuring, and aligning your team to leverage what you’re trying to accomplish? Create alliances. Are you building a base of internal and external support for your initiatives so that you’re not pushing rocks uphill?

Does your support network have the following qualities? The right mix of technical advisers, cultural interpreters, and political counselors. The right mix of internal and external advisers. You want honest feedback from insiders and the dispassionate perspective of outside observers. External supporters who are loyal to you as an individual, not to your new organization or unit. Typically, these are long-standing colleagues and friends. Internal advisers who are trustworthy, whose personal agendas don’t conflict with yours, and who offer straight and accurate advice. Representatives of key constituencies who can help you understand their perspectives. You do not want to restrict yourself to one or two points of view.